aaron c beals

[link to the embedded video above]

we certainly have a long way to go to improve the quality of life for a large percentage of the world, but there’s hope that we have some momentum in the right direction. this piece might seem a little overly-polished, glossing over the details, but he’s done the number-crunching to back it up. more along these lines from his website. (fair warning: the gapminder data visualization tool is highly addictive.)

i was reading my RSS feeds today, and came across this post about an Albanian developer who created an iPhone application that emulates the ancient Albanian lute (Çifteli):

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/19/if-you-like-the-oud-youll-love-the-tingalin-iphone-app/

i have to be honest, it takes some getting used to, but this is definitely playing a part in my next album. maybe a hidden track?

…in these trying times:

link

not unlike Bob and his love for soft rock ballads, i’ve gotta admit … i am a Mythbusters fan. recently, i have been keeping myself entertained by watching a lot of old episodes, but haven’t been able to put a finger on why the show draws me in (other than the obvious “they blow stuff up”).

much to my dismay, many people have maligned the show for skirting the finer points of the scientific method, to the point of discrediting anything and everything Jamie, Adam, and the crew uncover. yes, it’s low-calorie science, but it tastes much like real science — and frankly, the fact that the show is sparking such heated discussions about scientific approaches is welcomed.

this week, my friends over at xkcd set the naysayers straight and uncovered the source of my affinity for the show — i have been a longtime admirer of the late Richard Feynman and his legendary ability to make scientific information accessible to the unwashed masses. i’d like to think that the man who put himself through sensory deprivation in an experiment to explore consciousness would appreciate the Mythbusters’ approach.

i’m psyched to see that they’re following up one of my favorite cartoon series of all time (which was mercilessly canceled) with a feature-length (albeit straight to DVD) movie. they’re even releasing HD-DVD and Blu-ray versions…

the last Con Edison DC power station was cut off from the grid in NYC. looks like Tesla finally won:

“off goes the power current started by thomas edison”

i’ve always thought that the link between us nerds and rock & roll was more than just a coincidence. first, there was Greg Graffin, who has his PhD in evolutionary paleontology from Cornell. and now, Brian May from Queen is going back to complete his doctorate.

two posts in a week… what in the world is happening here?!?

(well, the deal is that i got around to linking to the “post” page from my blackberry, meaning that i can post from pretty much anywhere i get cell reception. however, i can’t promise this streak will continue indefinitely…)

this past thanksgiving, my younger cousins convinced me to join Facebook, something i had avoided for several reasons:

1) it started after i left college, and at first was limited to college students, so joining would have required some sort of email trickery.

2) i mentally grouped it with MySpace, that blight on the face of the web that managed to single-handedly resuscitate 1994-era monolithic webpages complete with blinking text, poorly laid-out pictures, and blaring music that starts upon page visit.

3) i didn’t see the benefit in social networking outside of my current utilities: my website, email, and instant messaging. i was using (and still use) LinkedIn, but that is more of a professional social networking tool rather than a personal one. i figured that i was connected enough.

what i didn’t realize at the time was that Facebook was built properly, with an eye to privacy and scalability, and seemed to be designed with simplicity in mind. luckily, my cousins managed to convince me, and i joined.

what i also didn’t pick up on at the time was that while i was freely sharing information about myself via my website, very few of my friends were doing the same. i could get information from those who had sites or blogs, but most of the rest didn’t have the time/money/patience/interest in something as heavy-duty as a website.

enter Facebook. it reduces the problems of website management and provides simple input for information from status updates to photos to contact information. my friends who didn’t have the incentive to run a website suddenly had little excuse not to sign up … and with all of them on there and updating, i instantly had a single source of information about what my friends are up to.

i’m not going to keep singing the praises of Facebook — like any time-consuming activity it does have its downsides — but will instead leave that to fanatics like Scoble. (90% of his posts in the past few weeks have referred to Facebook in some way, shape, or form.)

so i’m fine with taking some of the information i’d usually put on my blog (longer process, more thought-out content) and instead post bite-size pieces on Facebook. however, there are now ways of posting information on a more-constant basis. imagine a text-message-sized chunk of information about what you’re up to, updated several to many times per hour, and available for all your friends to see.

this approach has been called (appropriately, i think) micro-blogging, and there are no shortage of tools for sharing the minutia of your life with those who care to listen: Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, and Tumblr are the main ones. the distribution methods for micro-blogs are slightly different than blogs and social networking (which rely on site visits and RSS feeds). the information in micro-blogs is text-message sized, which means that you can sign up to have all info piped into your cell phone.

faaaaaantastic. how are we actually supposed to get anything accomplished if our time is sucked up writing about what we’re doing and where we are at any given moment and reading the same from hundreds of our friends? can you imagine how rapidly this would break down? (“reading the news”…”driving the car”…”working”….”surfing the web at work”…”reading Twitter messages”…”writing this message”…”reading messages”…”writing”…”reading”…”writing”) it’s like hooking straight up to someone’s mind, but without any sort of filter. frankly, i think it would be mind-numbing.

in my opinion, the line between Facebook and Twitter is the line between sharing and over-sharing. (but who knows… i once said that Facebook was a total waste of time. in a year, i might be posting about how i couldn’t imagine life without micro-blogging.)

stumbled across these two cool product designs the other day.

the keyport is practical and solves a problem that has been bugging me for a while — how to keep my keys in a simple, non-leg-jabbing container. there are some downsides, such as the loss of the ability to remotely open your vehicle (though they’re supposedly working on that) and the lack of jingly-ness (useful for entertaining pets and very small children), but i think that in general this would lighten load of the keychain and make it much easier to find the key you’re looking for. apparently this is going into production soon — i look forward to it.

   

the book-style remote control is just a concept, but it’s a cool one, taking the idea of the universal remote to a new, tab-indexed level. i think this would be cooler if it had rings along the edge, like a binder, so you could add custom remotes for any gadget in your arsenal (assuming the existing remotes didn’t do the job).

A few months ago, Laura informed me that the old computer just wasn’t cutting the mustard anymore, at least when in came to photo processing. I guess 8 hours was a little too long to wait for a process to run. I spec’ed out a PC online, but discovered that for about $700 less, I could build one myself — and with higher quality, quieter parts. Sure, it took me a little longer to build it, but it was totally worth it.

Before I get started, I’d like to thank my beautiful wife for making this project possible for me — without the motivation of her small business, I would have had no reason to build this machine (other than uncontrolled gadgetitis, but that doesn’t really fly anymore).

It’s good to be back. [Click here for photos]